A sea of red converged on the Capitol today to advise Gov. Rick Perry not to mess with Texas women.

Marcia Ball, an Austin musician who organized the protest, said the more than 100 activists, mostly women, wore red to show their anger with a recent move spearheaded by Perry to defund a $40 million Medicaid Women’s Health Program. The program provides healthcare and cancer screenings and birth control for low-income women between the ages of 18 and 44.

“Basic women’s health services were gutted by two-thirds last June, and last month they (Republicans) made a ruling that will cut access to healthcare for another 130,000 women,” Ball said. “You can send emails to these people all day, but we want them to see that we are real.”

If the ruling remains unchallenged, it will go into effect on March 14. However, some predict the matter will end up in court. The ruling – supported by Attorney General Greg Abbott, Perry and Thomas Suehs, the executive commissioner of Health and Human Services – comes in the flurry of a nationwide debate over contraception and abortion issues.

For more background information on the new ruling and Planned Parenthood, click here for a March 3 Houston Chronicle article.

Ball said Perry claims the ruling will close down abortion clinics and eliminate Planned Parenthood from the program when actually it is removing preventative care from low-income women that will eventually cost the state more money when uninsured women are hospitalized on the taxpayer’s dime for unplannned pregnancies, for example, or cancer that might have been prevented with earlier screenings.

“A man who is willing to do that (remove services) and still is in favor of the death penalty is a raging hypocrite,” Ball said.

Perry’s office, however, insists the decision goes back to the Obama Administration.

“Texas must receive approval from the Obama Administration to continue the program, which they have flat out denied unless we allow tax dollars to flow to abortion providers and their affiliates under the program, a clear violation of long-standing state law,” Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said.

“Texas has done nothing more than define qualified providers for this program as is allowed under federal law. But now the Obama Administration is holding the program hostage because our law does not fit with its pro-abortion agenda. If President Obama and Planned Parenthood truly cared about women’s health, they would fight to ensure this program is continued for the more than 100,000 women it serves,” she said, noting that “Planned Parenthood represents less than 2 percent of providers, while there are more than 2,000 qualified providers in more than 4,000 locations across the state.”

Ora Houston, a retired woman from Austin, said the “assault” on women’s rights is reminiscent of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960’s.

“We fought this battle in the ‘60’s and I am appalled that I’m here at 67 doing it again,” Houston said. “The men in power want to keep us pregnant and in the kitchen with pots and pans and we are not going to stand for that.”

Houston said the recent ruling is intrusive to a woman’s body.

However, not all activists in attendance were women.

Matt Clark, a retired actor who played in many western’s decades ago and more recently Back to the Future Part III, said he is protesting because it’s a human issue that effects the family.

“How many of these politicians don’t have healthcare? Of course they all have it,” Clark said. “They are defunding women’s health care while we are paying for theirs.”

Clark, along with many women at the rally, pointed to continued funding of erectile dysfunction pills like Viagra as discrimination against women.

Clark said women have less of a voice in politics, especially low-income families.

Candace Duval was at the rally gathering signatures for her name to be on the ballot to run in CD 21 against Lamar Smith. She said she thinks it will take a woman to beat Smith, who has been in office for 25 years.